I have reason to believe Vultr is secretly targeting Chinese Americans on the behalf of the US government in silencing freedom of speech and curtailing the ability for Chinese diaspora to access WeChat communications with extended family back in China.
I opened an account with Vultr on the bases that they offered competitive rates compared to some of the other cloud /server hosting platforms out there such as Amazon's AWS or Google's GCP or Microsoft's Azure. I had used them for several weeks and always promptly paid for any amount of usage that I had spent on there....
Up until the Trump announcement of the TikTok AND WeChat bans, Vultr had always accepted WeChat as a valid form of payment but then abruptly cut WeChat off…
Never had a problem until several days ago out of the blue for no reason at all I get an email from Vultr support stating that "Additional Verification Needed"... namely they wanted "1. A photo of your government ID (showing a name and photo only) and" and also "2. A partial photo of your Credit Card (showing the last four numbers & name only)."
I thought that was a strange requirement since I had paid upfront and never was behind or late on any payments, and none of the other cloud services such as AWS, GCP, Azure would retroactively demand more verifications after the fact, usually its at sign up, not after they had already approved for server/cloud usage. Nonetheless, I googled/searched around and apparently Vultr has a nasty habit of requiring photo verification for a multitude of reasons, some users have complained on their forum that they even require photo verification to use port 25 for email server hosting etc....
But before I could even have chance to go through this verification process, the very next day I received a follow up email from Vultr stating that I had less than 24 hours to provide the verification otherwise my account would get terminated. So for no reason and no explanation at all this quickly went from "we need additional verification" to "your portal activities will be limited until you complete full verification" to escalating all the way to we will shut down your account if you don't complete verification within 24 hours...
So I logged in and provided the verification requirements of the "photo of your government ID (showing a name and photo only) " and the "A partial photo of your Credit Card (showing the last four numbers & name only)"
I assumed all would be fine afterwards. I was wrong...
Then Vultr asked me why I was using their servers for, which I explained to stand up a VM in neutral countries such as Singapore in which WeChat is not banned, in the event that Trump follows through with his executive order to fully ban/block WeChat then I will the option or ability to still communicate with the desktop WeChat app if installed on a server that was located in a country that didn't have to follow the Trump madness with regards to banning all apps/communication platforms solely based on national origin...
The next day I get an email stating that I will now need to provide additionally "A photo of you holding the recently uploaded ID (next to face)" and that furthermore if I did not comply within 48 hours my account would get terminated....
So I immediately replied back to the email with a photo of myself, my face and my ID right next up to my face as requested. However, the email bounced back stating it exceeded the attachment file size limit...
So I decided to use the ticket url and log into the Vultr support page to directly upload my photo inside the site itself, but even when goinng through the site internally (as opposed to sending it as attachment via email) I was still getting the prompt/error about exceeding file size limits. I then took the original photo (which I had taken with my smartphone) and opened it up with a photo editting software and resized the resolution to 50%/cropped and then saved it with the final sizing being well under 8MB (which is standard) but then the site still refused to allow it to upload!
So I wrote back frustrated to the Vultr support and explained to them that if they wanted photos to be uploaded and gave such short deadlines before threatening to close account that it might be a good idea to support reasonable photo/file size limits to help facilitate such requests!
I also wrote to them asking why they were retroactively changing the requirements after the fact, after they were already satisfied and then asking for a photo of ID right next to the face when in fact in the initial request it only ever asked for a photo ID and said nothing about needing a photo of a face much less the ID held up directly to the face...
Several minutes later I noticed while still logged into the Vultr portal that I lost complete access to the billing page, then a few minutes after that I got forcibly logged out of the Vultr website altogether and the VM server that I had actively running which I was rdp'd (remotely connected) abruptly terminated. I attempted to log back into the Vultr website to see what happened but then it merely stated at the login prompt that "Your account is currently closed. " and they also killed the VM server that I was actively running at the time...
Guys, stay far far away from Vultr.... this is a hosting service that actively persecutes its users, requires draconian verification for the simplest stuff, and will abruptly terminate your service without reason nor cause even AFTER you had successfully jumped through their unreasonable hoops they will then move the goalpost and retroactively come up with more hurdles and when you contact them about their own infrastructure limitations (oh the irony) that prevent you from satisfying the additional/second/next round of new roadblocks that they themselves put up in the first place, then they will immediately terminate your account without sensibility...
I opened an account with Vultr on the bases that they offered competitive rates compared to some of the other cloud /server hosting platforms out there such as Amazon's AWS or Google's GCP or Microsoft's Azure. I had used them for several weeks and always promptly paid for any amount of usage that I had spent on there....
Up until the Trump announcement of the TikTok AND WeChat bans, Vultr had always accepted WeChat as a valid form of payment but then abruptly cut WeChat off…
Never had a problem until several days ago out of the blue for no reason at all I get an email from Vultr support stating that "Additional Verification Needed"... namely they wanted "1. A photo of your government ID (showing a name and photo only) and" and also "2. A partial photo of your Credit Card (showing the last four numbers & name only)."
I thought that was a strange requirement since I had paid upfront and never was behind or late on any payments, and none of the other cloud services such as AWS, GCP, Azure would retroactively demand more verifications after the fact, usually its at sign up, not after they had already approved for server/cloud usage. Nonetheless, I googled/searched around and apparently Vultr has a nasty habit of requiring photo verification for a multitude of reasons, some users have complained on their forum that they even require photo verification to use port 25 for email server hosting etc....
But before I could even have chance to go through this verification process, the very next day I received a follow up email from Vultr stating that I had less than 24 hours to provide the verification otherwise my account would get terminated. So for no reason and no explanation at all this quickly went from "we need additional verification" to "your portal activities will be limited until you complete full verification" to escalating all the way to we will shut down your account if you don't complete verification within 24 hours...
So I logged in and provided the verification requirements of the "photo of your government ID (showing a name and photo only) " and the "A partial photo of your Credit Card (showing the last four numbers & name only)"
I assumed all would be fine afterwards. I was wrong...
Then Vultr asked me why I was using their servers for, which I explained to stand up a VM in neutral countries such as Singapore in which WeChat is not banned, in the event that Trump follows through with his executive order to fully ban/block WeChat then I will the option or ability to still communicate with the desktop WeChat app if installed on a server that was located in a country that didn't have to follow the Trump madness with regards to banning all apps/communication platforms solely based on national origin...
The next day I get an email stating that I will now need to provide additionally "A photo of you holding the recently uploaded ID (next to face)" and that furthermore if I did not comply within 48 hours my account would get terminated....
So I immediately replied back to the email with a photo of myself, my face and my ID right next up to my face as requested. However, the email bounced back stating it exceeded the attachment file size limit...
So I decided to use the ticket url and log into the Vultr support page to directly upload my photo inside the site itself, but even when goinng through the site internally (as opposed to sending it as attachment via email) I was still getting the prompt/error about exceeding file size limits. I then took the original photo (which I had taken with my smartphone) and opened it up with a photo editting software and resized the resolution to 50%/cropped and then saved it with the final sizing being well under 8MB (which is standard) but then the site still refused to allow it to upload!
So I wrote back frustrated to the Vultr support and explained to them that if they wanted photos to be uploaded and gave such short deadlines before threatening to close account that it might be a good idea to support reasonable photo/file size limits to help facilitate such requests!
I also wrote to them asking why they were retroactively changing the requirements after the fact, after they were already satisfied and then asking for a photo of ID right next to the face when in fact in the initial request it only ever asked for a photo ID and said nothing about needing a photo of a face much less the ID held up directly to the face...
Several minutes later I noticed while still logged into the Vultr portal that I lost complete access to the billing page, then a few minutes after that I got forcibly logged out of the Vultr website altogether and the VM server that I had actively running which I was rdp'd (remotely connected) abruptly terminated. I attempted to log back into the Vultr website to see what happened but then it merely stated at the login prompt that "Your account is currently closed. " and they also killed the VM server that I was actively running at the time...
Guys, stay far far away from Vultr.... this is a hosting service that actively persecutes its users, requires draconian verification for the simplest stuff, and will abruptly terminate your service without reason nor cause even AFTER you had successfully jumped through their unreasonable hoops they will then move the goalpost and retroactively come up with more hurdles and when you contact them about their own infrastructure limitations (oh the irony) that prevent you from satisfying the additional/second/next round of new roadblocks that they themselves put up in the first place, then they will immediately terminate your account without sensibility...
